


Red

by actualPrincess



Series: Tales from The Apartment [7]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Drugged Sex, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7490259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualPrincess/pseuds/actualPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It can't be karma if you've never done anything bad enough to deserve this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure this is mainly dealing with the aftermath of rape, and is based off of what I've been told and heard from rape survivors. Since I see Dirk as a character with a lot of self loathing he blames himself a lot for this but please know that I do not blame any survivor for what happened to them. No one deserves something like this.

If you close your eyes you can try and pretend this is someone else holding you down on your bed. You wish it was Jake, but Jake would never be this rough. Your bruises wouldn't be from someone hitting you and you wouldn't be crying like you are now. You're shaking pretty hard, and the guy behind you scratches your back, hard, to get you to stop.

“This is just going to be worse if you're so tense.” He hisses in your ear. Your pants aren't even off all the way and your body feels too heavy to try to get away from this again. You're slowly coming to realize that this guy probably put something in your drink during the party. You'd been watching other people's drinks, you hadn't been paying attention to the guy you were talking to.

You regret for the first time, that your room is sound proof. It seems like one of the worst decisions in the world right now, because no matter how loud you yell no one's going to hear you. You're quickly resigning yourself to just dying right now, with some guy you barely know doing something you never thought would happen to you.

There's a knock on your door. Room checks, you think in the back of your mind. The guy behind you stills debating whether or not to answer, before getting up angrily and going over to the door.

“What do you want?” He growls opening the door a crack.

“Room check! Sorry to bother you, just making sure I have all my roommates.” You hear Jane say. You push yourself up, pain shooting through your everything and making you fall off the bed. There's a solid thud as you hit the floor.

“Yeah I got your roommate.” The guy says. You hear Jane stop the door with her foot.

“Dirk you alright in there?” Jane says, suspicion evident in her voice.

“Tamarind.” You mumble from the floor. You are suddenly very thankful your roommates made you agree to a “help word” at the beginning of the semester. You hear Jane push past the guy into the room, nearly slamming him into a wall. There are soft arms and touches circling you and you can still feel tears running down your face.

“Roxy!” Jane yells, and you hear heels running to your room. Before a very out of breath voice is chiming in.

“Holy shit.” She says. You hear the guy actually get slammed into the wall with a confused and pained grunt. “Get the fuck out of my house.” Roxy growls, slamming the guy against the wall again.

“Roxy, get him out of here, if anyone is still up have them call the police, I'll stay with Dirk.” Jane says, you can hear the authority in her voice and you open your eyes. It's been harder to feel the tears and the last time they'd been open you'd felt sick. Jane is kneeling next to you looking more angry than you thought was possible and Roxy might be getting an assault charge if she keeps holding up that guy by his neck.

Everything is sort of fuzzy, you're not sure if it's tears or drugs doing that. You see Roxy drop the guy, and grab his shirt to drag him out of the room as he's trying to catch his breath. You hear him start to yell at her and see a small figure run past your door. It looks vaguely like they hit the last step before they're out of your field of vision too lightly. But that would mean they'd jumped. You hear a loud bang and a scream of pain followed by Roxy cheering immediately following the supposed jump.

“Nepeta!” Comes a familiar male voice, taking quick steps towards the bang. The steps stop in front of your door. “Oh my. Do you require assistance?”

“Help me get him up.” Jane says her arms going under yours. “It's ok Dirk, can you hear me?” You nod feeling a second set of hands helping you stand and then sit back down on the bed. “I'm going to leave you with Equius for a minute, while I call the police, ok?” You nod again, which feels like the only thing you can do at the moment.

Jane leaves the room, the last thing you hear from her is, “I need an ambulance at-”

You sit on the bed trying to collect yourself. You look up at Equius, his arm is looped protectively around your shoulder. You remember that your pants are probably still sort of off. Look at that more shame.

“Help me with my pants.” You mumble, tugging on his shirt to get his attention. Equius nods and you're pulled up again, your pants quickly pulled back up to their place. You feel like a kid. You feel like you can't do anything, and you probably can't. Look at how well you've done so far, couldn't even look after your drink. Jane walks back into the room sitting down on the other side of you.

“Would you be a dear and go make sure we get that guy into custody?” Jane says and you feel Equius get up. Jane’s arm replaces his around your shoulder and you can't even be bothered to move. “Dirk?” She says gently, rubbing your shoulder.

“Caliborn.” You mumble, not looking at her.

“I think you're going into shock honey.” She says calmly, you hear sirens in the distance.

“No, that's his name. He told me at the party.” You press, you don't want to feel helpless right now.

“Alright, thank you Dirk.”

“Am I going to the hospital?” You ask, you're not a fan of doctors, but you know when they're necessary.

“It's a possibility. Do you need me to call one of your brothers? I can tell Dave to meet us down there.” You shake your head, Dave will tell your brothers, Jane doesn't know how to handle them.

“Just Dave.”

“Ok, I'll tell him.” She doesn't make a move to get up. You're pretty thankful, you need something to ground you right now. There's a moment of silence before you hear a knock at the door, Roxy answers it. There's some shouting from the Caliborn guy, you figure he's probably being handed over to the authorities.

Jane doesn't move until some guy tells her to, and you tense up at his voice.

“We're just going to run a few tests on you, before we take you to the hospital. Can you tell us what happened son?”

“The party. No, I… He dragged me in here. I told him I wasn't interested, but he kept pressing me. I- my head and my body felt really heavy and I didn't know what was happening until he hit me. Then I sort of ended up, with him behind me…” Your tongue feels slow, you don't know if all of that was coherent. Whatever drug you got in you is doing a number on your cognitive functions. You don't want to go into detail though. The guy, who you're guessing is a paramedic nods.

“Alright we're just going to run a few simple tests and check you out before going in the ambulance ok?” You nod weakly, may as well let people keep manhandling you. Since it's worked out so well already.

The paramedic guy shines a light in your eyes while another is putting one of those blood pressure measure things on your arm. One asks if there was any penetration and in the back of your mind you note that that is a good use of the word. It’s ugly and impersonal and you can’t think of better adjectives to describe this. Well you can, but you’re currently trying to get the fuck out of your head and stop thinking entirely. You haven’t answered so the guy tells Jane that they’ll run some tests at the hospital and you can file a report there if you want to. Jane asks if she’s allowed in the ambulance when Dave bursts in. One of the paramedics tries to push him out of the room before he’s angrily informed of Dave’s position as his brother. Then the only thing the paramedics are trying to get out of him is medical information. The paramedic you’d been talking to helps you stand and starts to lead you out of your room, Dave is pretty quick to get on the other side of you and loop your arm around his shoulders.

“I’ll call Bro in the ambulance, he can keep D from buying the first plane ticket here.” Dave says quietly enough for just you to hear. That’s good, D tends to over react when it comes to his kids. Not that you couldn’t do with some tlc about now, just not the mother hen kind that your brother specializes in.

“Thanks.”

“Jane’s coming with, want me to grab anyone else?”

“Just family for now.” The paramedic holding you up cuts in. “We’re gonna have to do some tests and you’ll have to wait outside till we’re done.” You can almost feel Dave roll his eyes.

“Dirk? What’s happened?” Your arm tightens on Dave’s shoulder and you feel his hand tighten protectively on your waist at Jake’s voice.

“An asshole that doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no’ is what happened.” You mumble leaning heavily against Dave as the paramedic opens the apartment door for you. At least the hickeys from Jake are covered by the bruises from Caliborn, you can still feel his eyes burrowing into your back. You don’t want to talk about it with Jake. You don’t want to think about how if you hadn’t slept with him you wouldn’t have even been trying to hook up tonight and this wouldn’t have happened. Even if you’re not sure how that relates to the fact that it did happen and you’re now one in the face of millions and billions of victims.

***

The tests at the hospital were, in a word, invasive. You were humiliated and prodded and asked questions you didn’t want to answer. Dave spent the whole time outside the room on the phone with his brother who was trying to keep your brother calm during the whole call. When the ok was given, and you were bandaged up lying in a hospital bed, you were handed Dave’s cell and met with a brother who was the opposite of calm, cool, and collected.

“Dirk, oh my god, are you-- how are you feeling? I’m buying a plane ticket as we speak,” ‘as we speak’ is parroted back to you by a muffled Bro, “We’ll be there tomorrow, I’m going to fucking kill that guy. I could do it too, got all the lawyers you could dream of, just say the word and he’s dead.” D says quickly, it makes you smile a little as Dave hands you your shades --you’d had to take them off for the exams.

“I’m-- I don’t know bro. I don’t…” You take a shaky breath and run your hand through your hair. You feel like you want to cry again, everything is just...crushing you right now. “I want a leave from classes for a while.” You say finally.

“Done.” D doesn’t ask, doesn’t prod you for a reason.

“I want a strife when you get here. A proper Strider strife, roof and everything.” You hear D laugh and shift the phone to his other ear, you’re not on speaker then, good.

“Only if you’re healed up enough.” There’s a pause that feels loaded, even Dave looks a little uncomfortable in the chair next to you. “Are you pressing charges?”

You take a deep breath and stare at the end of the bed silently. Are you pressing charges? You don’t want to relive this for months in court, but you also know that Caliborn might do this again. And you-- you can’t let this happen to someone else if you can prevent it. “Yeah, yeah I think-- I think I should.”

“We’ll figure shit out when we get there little man.” Bro says loud enough for you to hear over the phone.

“This isn’t your fault Dirk.” Your brother says firmly and you nod dumbly. This isn’t your fault, no, but you feel like you could have prevented it. It feels like this should be your fault, like this is cosmic karma for your indiscretions. Not that you can really think of anything bad enough to warrant this.

“I just--” You start but you’re cut off by Bro.

“I know little man, trust me I know, we’re gonna be there tomorrow so we gotta pack, but try to get some rest before we see you.” You nod. “Now give Dave the phone, gotta talk to him.” You hold the phone out to Dave and he takes it solemnly, leaving the room to talk with Bro. You settle back against the uncomfortable pillows and close your eyes to sleep.

***

The next few days blur together. D and Bro come into town and interrogate the hospital staff before interrogating several lawyers until they find a satisfactory one. You get out of the hospital and back to the apartment. Jake won’t look you in the eyes, and you don’t necessarily blame him, but there’s also a girl hanging around him so you figure it’s probably for the best. Jane and Roxy dote on you and you don’t think you’ve ever eaten so many baked goods. John doesn’t really know what happened when you first get back, just that Dave is more sleep deprived than normal and you’ve been at the hospital, after a bit of time in his room with Dave though he joined Jane in the baking and doting. It was odd seeing a guy built like John doting on you but it was nice.

You still feel out of it by the end of the week, by that point you’ve met with a lawyer and the police and your professors. You’re thinking of using your time off school to see about getting some investors for your robotics business, but there’s still a feeling of disconnect from your body. Bro, who you’ve learned more about in the past few days than in the years he’s been married to your bro, recommended a therapist and you’ve been talking to her over the phone while you work recently. The disconnected feeling is normal after trauma apparently.

It takes you two weeks to remember the sketchbook under your pillow. Looking through it makes you sick to your stomach. You take a marker and black out every drawing on every page of your secret sketchbook. It feels wrong, this notebook is dirty and wrong and you hate yourself. Who the fuck gave you the right to do this without Jake's permission, why do you think that erasing the face somehow makes up for what you've drawn of your best friend. 

The process dredges up more emotion than you’ve felt in the past week and by the time you finish the black box over the last drawing, you want to scream and cry and tear yourself apart. Instead you grab your lighter and a pack of cigarettes, and head up to the roof.

Apparently, marker ink is pretty damn flammable, at least sharpies are. The sketchbook catches fire quickly and you toss it into the fire pit in the middle of the roof. You use the same lighter to light a cigarette, shielding it from the wind with your hand, and holding a flame a second too long in the hope that it burns you.

**Author's Note:**

> Things will get better for Dirk. after this I might shift to one of the other couples or people in the apartment, Dirk and Jake aren't the only people that need love.


End file.
